Thursday, March 04, 1999

Nuxhall voice of summer

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BY PAUL DAUGHERTY
The Cincinnati Enquirer

Joe Nuxhall chats with catcher Brook Fordyce. (Craig Ruttle photo) | ZOOM |

        SARASOTA, Fla. — If you are of a certain age somewhere between infant and timeless, you have spent the better part of your life listening to Joe Nuxhall on the radio. He is the voice of summer. He is the sound of muggy nights wrapped around a can of cold beer sweating in your hand as you sit on the deck of your house and look at the moon. Joe is the calliope music of Cincinnati's best season. You can't remember when he wasn't.

        Sometime around 2 this afternoon, he'll take the microphone from Marty Brennaman and call the third inning of the Reds first exhibition game, against the Minnesota Twins.

        “And now with the play-by-play, here is Joe Nuxhall,” Brennaman will say.

        “Thank you, Marty,” Joe will say, and you will feel free to dream of springtime.

        It's Year 33 in the booth for the Old Left-Hander, the last year of his current contract. Cincinnati might disappear if he doesn't sign a new one. But Joe is 70 years old, 56 years in the game. He needs surgery on both knees. One of his hips isn't the greatest. He smokes too much. He could stand to lose some pounds.

        Sometimes Joe will be on an airplane, looking out the win dow, and he will lament what he has missed. Baseball has given him every summer; it has also taken them all away. “I've seen the entire country,” he says, “from 35,000 feet.”

        He'd like to go to the Grand Canyon in the summer. He went once, long ago, in the winter, but that wasn't much. “Yosemite,” Joe says. “I'd like to go there.”

        He hates the travel, the late nights and early mornings, the sameness of the hotels. “You travel the best there is, but the hotels still have four walls,” he says.

        Golf keeps him going. Golf, and the game. Joe does love the game.

        It took me a few years to figure Joe out. Joe is an acquired taste. When I was young and knew everything, I thought Joe was slow. Seasons changed quicker than Joe called a close play. Robins would blast springtime before Joe would criticize the Reds. After 12 years here, I'm still waiting for Joe's first question on the Star of the Game or the Nuxhall Report or whatever they call it.

        Silly me. Joe's secret is he has no secret. In an age of media phonies and sound-bite overload, Joe is Joe. The boys in marketing will never mess with him. Joe sounds like the game.

        Joe lolls. Joe pauses. Joe ambles and strolls. He takes his time. The game is not on the clock. Neither is he.

        We do enough running around. We sprint across our days, sure in the notion that if we work longer, achieve more and wring every second from every day, our lives will be better and fuller with meaning. They're not, of course. They're just more tiring.

        Joe is a hot bath. He's a cold beer. He's there at the end of the day. Listening to him makes you want to prop up your feet. It's a damned fine night when the stars are out and the air is warm and soft as down and you're sitting outside and the game is on and there's nothing to do but listen. It's the time of your life.

A fan speaks
        “You feel like you're a fan, talking to a fan,” Nuxhall says. He very rarely decorates himself with the word “I.” It's presumptuous and immodest and really, we all know what he means, anyway. “You want them to feel like they're sitting they're with you and they're seeing the same thing.”

        “You try to be as fair as you can. You try not to be flowery unless something special comes up. You have to be critical in some instances. But you try not to dwell on it.”

        Does anyone who knows Nuxhall dislike him? Does anyone dislike him at all? Twelve years here, I've never heard a bad word about him. He doesn't even cheat at golf. It's an amazing thing to live your life with no one disparaging you. Nuxhall does it without trying.

        “The real good feeling I get out of the whole deal is shut-ins,” he says. He likes bringing the game to those who can't get out. He gets lots of letters from people like that, who tell him the games are the best part of their day. “To do something for them is very special,” Nuxhall says.

        He thinks about retiring, but what would he do with that? He could play more golf, but he already plays his full. He could celebrate some holidays without worrying about leaving home at 3 to get to the ballpark by 4. Easter. Memorial Day. The Fourth of July. He could make some of those trips he talks about. But would they be better than the game?

        “I know I'd miss the game,” he says.

Seven-decade man
        So Joe is likely to re-up after this year. One more time. “I'm going to think real hard about it,” he says, “but probably so. I'd like to hang around long enough to get into the new stadium.” That would give him seven decades in baseball. Maybe he would rest then.

        I don't want to think of the games on the radio without him, so I won't. I'll think of working in the yard instead, or helping kids with homework or sitting on the deck in the thick of a starry summer night, all the time listening to the radio. Nuxhall will be there, his cadence somewhere between 33 rpm and molasses. It'll be slow and drowsy, and it will sound like baseball. It'll be just right.

        Enquirer columnist Paul Daugherty welcomes your comments at 768-8454.

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